With His Dying Breath
by NocturneBlack
Summary: As he lay dying he thought not of his wife but of the girl he had fallen in love with when he was eleven years old. Zuko/Mai.


**AN: This fic is a bit different from other things I've written. It is a teeny bit AU, and a lot angsty/tragic. I would love to here what you think in a review!**

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><p>As he lay dying he thought not of his wife but of the girl he had fallen in love with when he was eleven years old. With his eyes closed he pictures her when she was nineteen; her onyx hair coiled into twin buns, her bangs framing her cool gray eyes, her pale skin and long, graceful limbs. He feels his heart stir with love for her, for the woman he hasn't seen in four years. As Zuko lay on the cold earth of the battlefield, breathing his last breaths, his lungs pulling in oxygen, trying to save his slowing heart, he thinks not of his wife, but of Mai.<p>

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><p>He is eighteen when he is first introduced to Dao Ming, and he wants nothing to do with her. His uncle and all of his advisors tell him that she is surely his best option for marriage. She is of noble birth, born and raised in the Fire Nation, and has essentially been raised to become a wife and mother. Zuko looks at her and tastes ash in his mouth. He thinks only of Mai, and wishes that their lives could have turned out differently. If she only could have understood what his nation meant to him, what being Fire Lord to his people meant.<p>

He takes in Dao Ming's appearance as she sits in the high backed chair opposite him. Her dark brown hair is coiled in an intricate up-do and adorned with fire flowers. Her green eyes meet his. She is beautiful, there is no denying that. Zuko sighs deeply. A week later they are married.

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><p>Zuko can hear his heart pounding in his ears, the sound slow and somewhat erratic. He can feel the blood pooling at his back, soaking his clothes and minimal armor. He thinks of what Mai would say if she could see him. She would tell him that he was a fool for fighting along-side his people, and that it was his own fault that he was dying. He would agree with her. He was stupid. Perhaps a part of him had wanted to die. What was left to live for? A civil war was starting in the Fire Nation, he was trapped inside a loveless marriage, and at twenty three years of age he still did not have an heir. He did not so much fear death as he regretted the life he had lived— the one he had lived without her.<p>

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><p>When he and Dao Ming had consummated their marriage he had imagined that it was Mai lying beneath him. He thought of the way Mai pulled at his hair and the sounds she made when he made love to her. He thought of the fervor and passion with which she moved against him. He remembered how she tasted. He thought of how alive he felt when he was inside her. Mai loved him. Dao Ming did not, and might have even felt something akin to contempt toward him. Zuko didn't blame her. After he and Dao Ming finished she did not curl against him and he did not reach for her. Instead they both retired to their separate sides of the bed and found sleep alone.<p>

A year into his marriage to Dao Ming he sees Mai again. He is just shy of twenty. It is the last time he will see her. He is vacationing on a small Fire Nation island without his wife— who is visiting with her parents for a number of days without him. He has traveled to this island specifically to see Mai, to see whether or not she still lives here.

When she opens her door he can see that she wants to slam it shut in his face. Her eyes are steely and hard, scrutinizing him and daring him to speak.

"Mai," he says, barely above a whisper. His voice has gone hoarse in his throat.

"Why are you here, Zuko?" unshed tears coat her eyes. He looks away from her and feels shame wash over him; he is a married man, after all.

"I needed to see you." She sighs deeply and opens the door to him.

"I need to tell you I'm sorry," he begins. They are still standing in the entry way of her home. Neither one dares to move.

"I know that I made things hard for you. Harder than they needed to be. I didn't make enough time for you, for us." His voice catches in his throat. Her eyes are boring into his.

"I didn't come here to get you back, or prove my love to you. I'm married, and that can't change. But Mai if I could change things— do things over— I would make sure I didn't lose you. If I could have loved you—"

She chokes out a sob as he speaks the word "loved" and suddenly she has collapsed in his arms, her body shaking against his. He clutches her body like a lifeline, terrified of what will happen if he lets her go.

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><p>Zuko thinks that he must be hallucinating now, and that death is a few short minutes away from claiming him, from lifting him out of his body and leaving it to wither on the cold, blood-soaked ground. There are three arrows lodged deep within his torso, and somewhere in the back of his mind he commends the spirits and the gods for their irony, for choosing death by man-made weaponry for an immensely powerful bender. The hallucinations— which are more like memories than anything else— begin to flood his brain. They all feature her.<p>

He sees himself at nine years old, when he first met Mai, when she would come to the palace to play with Azula. He sees the faint red of his cheeks when she catches his eye, he recalls feeling confused as to why she made him feel the way he did.

He sees himself at eleven, when he and Mai would occasionally hold hands and walk around the outer courtyards of the palace, away from Azula's sharp eyes and sharper tongue. And he sees himself two years later, at thirteen, possibly months or even weeks before his banishment, when he kissed her beneath the large maple tree, his lips and hands confident yet clumsy. She had turned such a pretty shade of pink then, her lips curving into a genuine smile. She had leaned forward and kissed him again, and Zuko had thought that nothing would be better than this.

He sees himself at sixteen, the two of them rolling on his bed, their lips connected in a heated kiss, still clothed in the moments before passion would consume them.

He sees her face, demure and elegant and feminine, and he sees her smile, one of her rare grins that shows off the white of her teeth, grins that only come when he is near her.

He sees himself at seventeen, sees her leave.

But the image of her leaving is quickly cut short, to be replaced by the image of her at nineteen, when he saw her last, naked and pliant beneath him. He sees her eyes, sees the love and conviction plainly, neither of which had faded one bit in the two years they had gone without one another.

Zuko takes his last breath (he can't even feel the arrows anymore, doesn't smell the pungent scent of his own blood), his dying breath—

_inhale…_

The feeling of her hand reaching out and landing softly on the scarred flesh of his cheek.

_exhale_…

Her lips brush against his once more before she leaves him forever, his body left lifeless on the ground.


End file.
